ARLINGTON — A new piece of medical training equipment could help local paramedics and emergency medical technicians save lives.

The Arlington Fire Department recently purchased a Simulaids Adult Advanced Life Support trainer — an 80-pound dummy that allows staff to practice the techniques they employ when responding to emergency situations.

The manikin features realistic oral and nasal airways, intravenous therapy sites and even emits a pulse and breath sounds.

“(The) purchase of this training tool allows our local senior paramedics to routinely test and train our new and rookie paramedics and emergency medical technicians on a wide variety of technical medical procedures,” said Doug Schmidt, department medical services officer.

The dummy was purchased with $2,250 in grant funds from the Medic One Foundation. Additional funding for the $3,100 piece of equipment was provided by the department.

“The Medic One Foundation has been a great partner to the Arlington Fire Department and without their assistance we would not have been able to purchase such an advanced piece of equipment for training our medics,” said Fire Chief Jim Rankin.

Fire department staff held a demonstration of the dummy on Thursday, April 22 at Arlington Fire Station 46.

During the 20-minute demo, staff members showed how the manikin can be hooked up to their defibrillators and other equipment personnel already have.

“Before this, we had nothing,” said Arlington paramedic Alex Jenness. “We didn’t have anything to interact with before. Now we can use these during our quarterly EMS meetings.”